


Souls and Promises

by YuinoSery



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, just a bit of sad, slightly soulmate au I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 21:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20414224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YuinoSery/pseuds/YuinoSery
Summary: just a little talk about souls





	Souls and Promises

**Author's Note:**

> just a little two hour thing i wrote at the start of the month, haven't written in forever so this has me all kinds of anxious haha

"if you weren't the Warrior of Light, what do you think you'd be?"

Yuino stopped at the sudden sound of Emet-Selch. She had neither heard him void in nor realized his presence in her inn room for the past 20 minutes he had been there. 

Perplexed at his sudden interest in her, she shrugged. "I don't know." was her simple answer. "You don't know?", he asked just as perplexed. 

"Well, yeah." She stopped from tidying up her bed and looked at him standing in front of the window. "It's not like I remember anything from before starting my adventure, so I don't really know.", she continued and resumed her cleaning. 

Her answer didn't surprise Emet as much as he first expected. He had heard a similar answer before, thousands of years ago. He snarled. His eyes really weren't playing him a trick now were they?

She hummed a bit while cleaning up, thinking of the past few days. "Say, Emet.", she began, hearing him snarl again. She had called him Emet a few times before, always a bit to his annoyance. 

"When you searched for Y'shtola, you said something along the lines of looking for her 'color'. What does that mean?", she turned around and eyed him. 

He saw the curiousity in Yuinos every feature, it was a bit like she would explode were he not to explain. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, I'm curious and you did say that if we scions ever needed an answer you'd be willing to answer.", she immediately shot back shortly after the question escaped his lips. A sigh soon followed. 

He thought for a bit, not sure how to exactly explain it to her. Would he go into too much detail, he'd have to deal with her being too noisy, if he explained too little, her curiosity would stay unsatisfied. And then there was the question if she would ask for more than he was willing to answer at the moment. 

"It's simple, really. Every soul has its own color. Though most are faded versions of them nowadays.", he answered nonchalantly, hoping this would be enough though knowing that it wouldn't be. 

"So what is the color of my soul?", Yuino asked, curiousity now fully laid bare. He cringed, he didn't want to have to answer that question. He knew her color by heart and yet hated seeing it again. But he also couldn't resist satisfying the brimming curiosity in her eyes. 

"It's a shade of dark red. Like a river full of blood.", Emet answered after a few awkward minutes. Yuino sat down on the bed hearing that. What a curious comparison that seemed to her. But there was another burning question in her. 

"Does every soul have its own color or do some souls have the same ones?", she asked, dragging out the words a bit to lengthen the sentence and give herself time to think about what she was saying while saying it. 

Seemingly tired from standing near the window, Emet began to walk over to her and sit down on the bed next to her, looking down on his hands. It was barely above a whisper when he finally answered: "No. Every soul has its own color, its own shade."

Yuino hummed and stared at his hands while mulling over that answer a bit. He knew the next question she would ask, knowing full well he didn't want to answer it. 

"So have you...", she trailed off, not sure she actually wanted to know the answer. Would she actually want to know if he had met her soul over the aeons already? It was a question on her mind, but what if the answer wasn't to her satisfaction? What if he had and they had been in an eternal fight all the time? 

Yuino trailing off gave Emet the chance to consider how he would answer. He didn't want to lie, he had no reason to lie, yet he also did not want to say the truth. Say how often he had met her in her many incarnations, how often they had fallen in love and had lived together through the years. 

With each and every incarnation had he fallen in love, living in peace for a short time before having them be taken from him again. All of them shared that faint hue of dark red, the curiosity and love that brimmed with every fiber of their being. But Yuino had been the first one to remind him fully of how She used to be. None of the incarnations had been such near perfect replicas like Yuino had been. 

He had noticed it before, but this nights chat had truly proven it to him. All of the incarnations had their memory in tact, remembering their whole life. It had only been Yuino that shared the trait of not remembering anything with Her. That same memory wipe that had occurred to Her after Hydaelyn had been created. It pained him to remember. 

"Does it matter? Every soul is their own being. There is no need for you to know.", Emet said after the silence continued, hoping to also give her mind a rest as she continued to think about her question. When he looked up at her, she seemed relaxed and content with what he said. She even nodded a few times. 

A few minutes of silence passed between the two before Yuino spoke up again. "You seem weirdly content with knowing I have no memory.", she said while turning to him. Emet shrugged. "What, do you expect me to be this interested in you?", he snarled. 

She laughed, a sound that resonated within him deeply, before shaking her head. "I guess not.", she turned to look at the window he had previously stood next to, "it's just that everyone else who finds out bugs me with so many questions." She sighed remembering her chats with the scions when she had told them.

"How I ended up choosing my name, if it is actually my name or something I just came up with, my age, what it was like and so much more. I guess it's just that I'm more used to people asking me about this weird situation I am in than when I'm not asked."

Emet studied her face as she murmured her tale. She seemed both happy and lost looking back at those conversations. But it did make him curious - why had she chosen that name? He cared, deeply, to find out but was also not sure if he wanted to ask. Before he could however, she continued.

"When I came to, on that ride to Gridania, and was asked for my name... It was just a name that immediately came to mind. It resonated with me and that's why I've been using it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have thought of something or just didn't answer. Delayed until I knew since it does give me weird looks sometimes that I'm a Miqo'te and yet have no fitting name." 

A smile formed on her face when she thought about that. Emet kept his eyes on her face for a moment before also turning his head towards the window. "It's a beautiful name.", he said, making sure not to look at her no matter how much he wanted to. Her smile grew bigger at his words and she chuckled. "Yeah, I think so too."

Hours passed with the two continuing to chat. After a while, as Yuino grew more and more tired, she rested her head on Emets shoulder. She had expected him to protest or move away, but instead he laid his head on hers. They continued talking like this for a while before she fell asleep. Not wanting to move and wake her, he continued to sit there and let her sleep on his shoulder. 

After a few minutes, having made sure she was actually asleep, he intertwined his left hand with her right hand and started to caress her cheek with his right hand. After an evening of inner turmoil and seeing a near perfect copy of Her, this motion was soothing for him.

His fingers started to trail off as he kept thinking of times long, long ago. Of the Yuino he had loved, the one who had betrayed and then forgotten him. And before he could stop himself, he started talking to the sleeping incarnation. 

"You're just like Her, strong, caring, honest, curious, so full of love and so easily shaken by every tragedy that happens. That same amnesia after getting in contact with Hydaelyn. It irritates me. But there is also the way how colors just seem so much brighter when I'm around you, just like aeons ago with Her.

There has always been this pull I've been feeling towards this damn soul shard of yours. All these other incarnations and you... I wonder, were you to rejoin with all your shards, would She stand in front of me again?"

He paused for a moment, basking in memories of times long gone. 

"I wish I could tell you so many things, but time nor the situation are on our side. I wish I could spend the rest of your time with you and yet... I know this is not something either of us can actually do. I just hope, no, wish that when the time comes, you promise to remember. Remember me, remember us, just... Remember."


End file.
